The solace of light

It is not often that we find light within ourselves. In the midst of all the wildfire that engulfs us, looking inside is a relatively low priority task. It is much easier to look outside and take decisions.

Of course, there are many ways of introspection and not all ways are good always. In fact, most of the ways become useless if no action is taken on them and many others can be based on momentary impulses.

Thus, it is important to have a limited self-introspection. I strongly believe that life is a journey to oneself. However, a journey is impossible without pitstops or any other form of rest or entertainment. Similarly, the journey to oneself should contain all sorts of tasks that keep us ont he path of light without stretching us to limits.

Of course, the journey has to be towards ourselves. And then perhaps, when we are moving inwards but looking elsewhere, we will find something extraordinary in the fringes of our sight. A light that is peaceful, a light that is understanding and a light that we understand.

Under that light, we might find ourselves and true solace.

Kuchh adhere khwab

Khwabon ke beej le ke chale the.
Ke kabhi manzilon ke ped ugenge.
Badan bhi khaad ki tarah jhonk diya.
Paseene ko paani ki tarah piro diya.
Aaj dekhta hun apne khaali haathon ko magar.
To soch mein pad jaata hun.
Shayad beej hi nakli honge..

Loss

It is inevitable and it is irrecoverable. And yet, it has to be dealt with. Everyone has their own way of dealing with it as I have mine.

Unfortunately, mine started with listening to a song that will now become a memory attached to the loss. Ironically, the song is completely unrelated and until yesterday, was of no consequence.

How do we attach these songs with such important moments? I have no idea. However, please listen to song about love, laughter and joy that now, I associate with loss.

That first look

That first look, that first smile.
I knew that I had gone fragile.

The heart pounding, with joy.
The brain, frozen, a broken toy.

That first hi, I knew I was done.
Not a single day now, is a burden.

I knew not what to do.
I knew not what to do.

Love, it is not, I think so.
Infatuation, I hope so.

Not because I can’t get you.
Not because I don’t want you.

Simply because you are perfect.
A gemstone without any defect.

Any closer, and two things happen.
Either I die, or my spirits dampen.

I burn by your flame like a moth.
Or the truth burns my soul draught.

The distance, keeps the heart fonder.
The void, keeps the relation stronger..

Self-Loathing

Funny word, this is. It stands against everything our survival instincts stand for.

How can we hate ourselves? But we do. All of us go through a moment which is simply painful. So much so, that you want to cry. Unfortunately, the tears have dried up.

It is just a moment. Nothing more. But that moment is larger than anything that is felt by you. The reasons can be many. A girl who hurt you, a girl you hurt. Someone who left you forever! Someone you left when they needed you. Each reason can bring self-loathing to you.

One case is however, more intense than others. One case, where you are not only in self-loathing mode, you actually physically hate yourself in third person. When does this happen? When you hurt yourself. When you cheat on yourself and when you leave yourself.

Sounds weird, impossible, untrue. Well, it all is happening to me right now. I am cheating on myself. I am hurting myself and above these two, I think I am leaving myself. Why is not important.

The important fact is that I don’t know how to bring myself back. This relationship is the most important one I have had and I don’t know how to make it right. I want to make it all right but like in any relationship I am too panicked to do the right thing.

I just want to take an action that makes things right or wrong. I have to do something and everything I am doing is not working out. I started this journey with a plan but now, I do not have any vision of that plan in sight. What has happened? Why do I get distracted so easily? Why am I not the guy I love sometimes? It is a beautiful life but why am I not making it even prettier.

Why am I cheating on myself?

Loss

There are five stages of dealing with loss, I have heard. The Kubler-Ross model says that the stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. While people might feel a few of them or all of them in different orders, mostly they will have to end at acceptance to move on with their lives.

However, what if the loss is actually of a relationship. I believe that an end to a relationship is not unlike death. When two people come together, they combine to become a new entity; an entity that gets dissolved when the relationship breaks. The pain is almost vengeful and wants to hurt you for letting the relationship die.

This makes me wonder if the same five stages are observed after a relationship ends. Perhaps! Probably!

The interesting part is not this but the fact that these five stages are experienced by two people and if they experience it in two different times, chaos ensues. What if for one person, the relationship died sometime before it ceased to exist for the other person?

Do you think that it is this asynchronous relationship death causes the friction at the end of the relationship? While one person is going through denial, other is going through anger. When the first person reaches anger, the second one is already depressed and by the time someone actually reaches bargaining, an acceptance has creeped in the relationship demise. Voila! You are done with the cycle while the second person is still trying to understand the head and tail of everything.

What should be done? Trying to match the frequency is one way, although I doubt it would work as it is the lack of frequency that is causing the end of the relationship in the first place. What to do?

Is it best to go through the steps quickly so that you are hurt less. Or is there nothing else to do except going through the pain.

For once, I do not have an answer. The pain is there and by the time it will go, there won’t even be the wound left. Probably a scar to remind me of the nth time I screwed up.

Description of a simple object - 1

It is not often that you shift your direction of writing in a fashion to improve it rather than express. But sometimes, it is important to write to improve enough to become good at articulating one self. Hence, I will try to work on this for a few times.

It is mobile phone and it is black. The edges are round and while the back side is glass with a beautiful pattern that shines in light, the rim is made of some kind of plastic that improves the grip. The length and breadth of the phone is just right to keep it in the pocket and it is a very thin phone to hold in hand. The cover increases thickness but it is worth the protection the cover offers. The front screen is a glossy 4.7” high resolution marvel and while it is old in the current world, it has aged beautifully. When the screen is off, the whole front takes on a deep black color and it is indistinguishable as to from where the screen start and where it ends. Of course, earpiece helps find the spot on top where it has definitely ended. There are two cameras that help me capture the moments of my life and although I am not an avid photographer, I am glad that the rear one has a flash as well. The front camera sits on the top-right corner and is nothing more than a small circle. The rear camera has more going for it with a flash to accompany it. There is also a screen guard on the screen to protect it from daily scratches. All in all, for a three year old model and around 2 years in my hand, it is a good phone to own.

Taking time

It was, I think, Warren Buffet who said: 'Somethings just take time.'

He was not wrong. In fact, sometimes, somethings are better off with taking more time. As much as I want to say that it doesn’t matter, sometimes a few extra minutes is all that takes for life to go from almost raw to freshly cooked.

Another example would be a bath. Normally, a 5 minutes activity, it is done to clean the body. However, add extra 10 minutes (I know, 15 minutes is too much for a guy!) and you come out with a clean soul. The burden of life has been swept off from the body and the pains of the past are all drowning with sweat and dirt. I know this because I am experiencing this at the present moment. I am enjoying this bliss right now while writing these words and in all probability, these words are an outcome of this freshness of mind and body that I am feeling at 7 PM in the evening.

In our attempts to save those extra minutes of our lives, I suppose we have forgotten the charms of giving those extra minutes to ourselves. I don’t think such baths are in my future any time soon. However, I will remember to cherish them whenever the opportunity arises.

Curiosity leads to buying wrong stuff!

I have been buying a lot of stuff lately. However, nothing beats the recent blogging app that I bought. The reason I bought it is stupid but even more stupid is how I felt after buying it.

It is not a bad app mind you. It is just a poor soul who started off a wrong foot with me and if it had a trial version, I would not have bought it for sure. In the end, I had to buy another blogging software. The irony is that I loved the trial version of this software and had no qualms about using it. The only problem was my curiousity and reviews of the other app.

Everyone said that it was slightly better than this one but I shouldn’t have listened to reviews but my own experience.

The two apps here are - Desk.pm and Blogo. Desk is a good app but not what I needed. On the other hand, Blogo was working perfectly for me. Both had the same price and my curiosity ensured I end up paying for both of them.

Earlier, I had spent even more money of video games!

I have decided to not buy anything like this for the rest of the month. This is going to be my penance.

Good Coffee and Bad Coffee

If you ask any coffee enthusiast, that person will tell you that there are several types of coffees and their taste will depend on various factors like the type of land where the plant was growing or the type of care it receives or the temperature it is generally growing in and so on and so forth.

I am a coffee nonthusiast. I drank my second cup of coffee in the past 30 days today and these two cups are my total quota of coffee I drank this year. So, yes, a typical coffee nonthusiast.

In my vast experience, I have realised that there are actually two kinds of coffee - *spoiler alert* -

Good Coffee and Bad Coffee

My first coffee of this year was in Starbucks and I chose the simplest milk coffee present. Nothing humungous considering my extreme nonthusiasm. It was good and with every sip, my mind said, ‘I can drink this more than once a year.’ Of course, after that I went awake for two days and thus realised the impact a cup of coffee can have on a noob.

This brings me to my second cup that I just sipped halfway through (after putting in 4 extra packs of sugar in it!) and then threw away. This was gifted to me by McDonald’s. Now, I am not bad mouthing McD here. In fact, I love the fries and the wraps they make and Mcswirl is really something. In fact, I might be their silver or gold star customer by now.

However, that coffee was brewed in the pits of Tartarus. I am awake so yes, the impact is similar but I am not drinking this thing to stay awake unless its a matter of life and death.

And for the people who might say that I might have accidentally drank cappuccino, you might be right. But that doesn’t make it a good coffee. My tongue won’t differentiate the coffees based on names now, will it.

So, from a coffee noob to other noobs out there, if you want to give coffee a shot, go to a place that has at least 10 varieties. It will be easier to find that good coffee than trying that cheap joint with one flavor. You might have to kiss a few frogs before finding the prince/princess/coffee but as I said - There are only two types - Good Coffee and Bad Coffee and you have to find the good coffee only once.

A classic sentence!

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
- William Congreve

There is a reason why some words stand the test of time. It is not because they are true or because they were kept noted in a waterproof diary. It is because they feel true and were told and retold till they became gospel.

Every man has at least once felt these words and let me tell you, even if they have not quoted the author, they have paraphrased this sentence many times. This sentence holds that amount of power.

I leave you with just one more sentence that hopefully captures the essence of this timeless line-

“She’s upset, you’re screwed."

Finally the Mac

I have rarely gotten anything easily. I crossed JEE in two attempts, got into MBA a year later than I planned and my first stint at college was not good for my grades so going to give it a second try. Even in mathematics, it took me two boards to get a perfect score. My parents have ensured that the same goes for things too.

I got my videogame long after I wished for it. By the time I got the video game, I had already cried for it in public places often and had already spent more money than its actual cost in pay for play parlours.

My PS3 took years to come and so did the first LCD tv. Both got to me together. And of course, the mac. I wanted my first computer to be a Mac. It was not to be of course. At that time, the financial condition was not good enough to buy a Mac and I was in too much hurry to wait for a couple of years to save that kind of money. Instead I went for an HP. I do not think it was a bad choice. However, it was not a good one either. I have learnt the art of patience the hard way but I have indeed learnt it.

In fact, the Mac that I have has come after 3 years of longing but not buying. I could have bought it when I got the job but I decided to wait until I absolutely needed it. My company helped in the wait by giving me a laptop for work. It was a Lenovo T series and good laptops come out of lenovo’s stable.

However, finally, the wait got over. The wait paid off in a laptop that is the latest model, will work for the years to come and gives me time to fall in love with it all over again. I always knew I would buy a Macbook Pro. Initially, I was going to buy a 17” (years ago), then I thought of buying a 15” but finally, by the time I actually bought it, 13” rule the world.

Thus, I have the latest Macbook Pro 13” that I am writing this article on.

I am loving the smoothness and although I do miss a few things here or there of windows, I doubt I will ever miss those things enough to go back to Windows without absolute necessity.

My next laptop will be a Macbook Pro 13” 2018 Model. Just a guess.. ;)

A Long Night!

Right now, a beautiful girl is sleeping beside me on the bed snoring softly about to wake up in an hour. I love her. It's that simple. There are no ifs or buts in this. But here I lay awake as she and I will be parting ways, probably forever.

Don't get me wrong. Its not my first breakup. Its not even the most surprising one either. We have been discussing over this for a long time in many words and even more emotions. We will be in different continents with oceans being our barriers and even the wind would not reach there to tell her my tales, my sorrows and my toils. While you might say that true lovers cannot be parted by such measly situations, I will just say that, once, I believed the same. I was a narcissistic man with ideas of grandeur and theory on love. All that is broken and shattered.

When she came into my life, I was a shell of a man with not a single belief in relationship or love. I was barely human and that credit also goes to my family. They kept me going and loved me even then. On my own, I was simply existing. She started mending each piece one by one. I hurt her, again and again. In fact, I have hurt her in more than I ever hurt anyone deliberately. She endured and even succeeded in filling this shell with joy. I had given up on happiness and I got that happiness with her. And now, I will let it go. I will let it all go proving that I am still not the man I once was. I am still weak and insecure, so filled with my own fears that I would rather have the certainty of nothingness than a sliver of chance of pain.

For all my proclaims of truths, I am just a boy too scared to accept the truth. I have the girl I want but I just don't want her now. I want her two years from now. Funnily, I know that within one month of today, I will be depressed, filled with sorrow and probably writing another blog post telling you how I miss her.

Earlier, I used to think that I will be unhappy without her. Now, I really question whether I want to be happy without her. Will the world be a better place with me alone fighting the war. Should I give in to these emotions and let myself be blown away by my heart once again. Last time I did that, I broke myself. This time, will it be different?

But I digress. The point is not my inner turmoil but how cute she looks while sleeping. This is one of those few times ever that I know I cannot snuggle to bed. I hate snuggling. But I hate this situation even more. I would rather snuggle with her than write anything about it. She is my first true relationship. She is my first true relationship and it is on the verge of ending. The choice is mine, apparently. I can save it from ending right now. The problem is, I am afraid that eventually, my fear will catch up and end it anyways. Is it better that it ends when she is prepared for it rather than ending when we are busy with our MBAs and actually in no position to handle the situation. I don't know!

Honestly, I don't want to know. She is very similar to IIMA in that respect perhaps. Earlier, I thought she was like Kelley, a place I was to go because I had no options. But as this story gets closer to its end, I realise that she is like the IIMA, the best thing that happened to me but I do not have the right respect for her. It will come, for both, in due course of time. I am sure of it. With IIMA, at least, I will have the chance to make amends. I am afraid I won't get that opportunity. She will become part of the list of people I apologise every night for all the wrongs I have done them.

Still, let me have these few moments of her snoring softly and absorb them before they become part of my archives. A girl I have loved the most, a girl who changed my definition of relationship, someone whom I trust so much and most importantly, the girl who filled me with joy.

Kirtika Singh, I love you, with all my heart!

And, I will always love you. I don't know what the future holds for us, but I know, it holds the world for you. Cherish it, even if it is without me. As for me, I will again become that shell. Only this time, it will be flooding with your love and memories. This post will be out there for the world to read but I hope you do not read it soon enough. I can't confront all this with you right now. I didn't want happiness but you gave it to me nevertheless. Without you, I have no use for it again. I hope you take it with you.

This time with emotions...

I have time to grow up. I do not just know that because of all the pain that I am feeling right now but also because of all the pain I am causing right now. Ironically, both are intricately related. I am the one causing pain to myself. There is a couplet by Javed Akhtar:

Khud hain apne safar ke dushwari.
Apne pairon ke aable hain hum..

[Myself am my journey's hurdle/I am my feet's blisters]

This has always resonated with me. However, in recent times I had the feeling that I am now all grown up and mature and this is not going to happen again. It will happen again. Not because I am weak or because that is what fate has decreed upon me.

This will happen again because despite everything, sometimes, I will still act like a human being and will react emotionally to situations when I should not. Sometimes, the human in me will overpower me. I will have to find a way to either civilise that human or I will have to find alternative ways to pacify and rationalise with myself.

I have to find more commitment and conviction for my goals. That might work. That just might work.

It is one solution that has many possibilities and all of them good. 

Pain

You are selfish, said the selfless one.

You are lazy, said the hardworker.

You are adamant, said the gullible.

Loser, said the one who lost.

I was judged thoroughly.

Every single time.

The judgements are right.

I’ll chime.

They are all right.

They all know the truth.

I am selfish, lazy, adamant all.

Loser too, is an ok call.

Please then, see through me right.

And leave me, alone, tonight.

The ghosts have bothered me not much.

The past too haunts me zilch.

It is the present,

It is the people.

People who claim all the love.

People who care for me.

Please stay,

Far away from me.

Maybe I need you.

Maybe I will die without.

But let me die this once please.

I don’t want you so.

Please stay away from me.